Americans – many of them, anyway – revere the Constitution and the men who framed it. We can recite its preamble with its call to “secure the blessings of liberty” for future generations. Indeed, Americans “still inhabit the political world the framers created,” according to historian Jack Rakove, who has written or edited dozens of books on the founding era. But more than 230 years after its ratification, Mr. Rakove contends we’re still laboring under damaging myths about what the Constitution does and does not allow.
In this episode of History As It Happens, Mr. Rakove, a professor emeritus of history and political science at Stanford University, discusses why myths or spurious claims about the nation’s founding document persist.
“Thanks to the First Amendment, we have an open marketplace for ideas. So lots of legitimate scholars can join the fray and, on the other hand, lots of wretched or flawed or problematic ideas can flourish, too. They flourish in social media and some would say they flourish at the level of the Supreme Court which in a lot of jurisprudence purports to be historical but gets many aspects of the story wrong,” Mr. Rakove said.
Mr. Rakove identifies the founders’ views on democracy; the debate over how to apportion representation in the Senate; the purposes of the Electoral College; and the original meaning of the Second Amendment as among the most poorly understood aspects of constitutional history causing strife today.
Listen to Jack Rakove talk about constitutional myths by downloading this episode of History As It Happens, available at washingtontimes.com or wherever you find your podcasts.
